Our Most Wanted DC TV Shows

Arrow, The Flash, Gotham and Constantine all already have TV shows, and we’ve got Supergirl and a few more on the way, but it’s never enough! Here are a few ideas for shows based on DC comics that we most want to see.

Yes, he’s a villain, and yes, hardly anybody’s heard of him, but let me let me tell you why this would be amazing. Vandal Savage was originally a caveman, who came into contact with radiation that was brought to Earth inside a meteorite. This radiation made him incredibly smart (even for a present day human), but more importantly it granted him immortality. Since he’s been alive for tens of thousands of years, he’s only become more intelligent, as well as now being a master of hand to hand combat, and having a brilliant knowledge of science and history (having been there for all of it).

In the comics, he’s been (or claimed to have been) many famous people from every era, including Alexander the Great, Julius Caeser, Ghengis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, Blackbeard and Jack the Ripper. This show pretty much writes itself. It would start with a caveman trying to deal with being the most intelligent being on the planet, as well as dealing with the curse of immortality. That could really be a series in itself, but here it would only need to be one episode. As the series went on, every episode would be set in a different time period, and would be the story of how, over thousands of years, a once innocent man decides that if he has to live forever, he wants it all.

I know that this isn’t exactly his back story in the comics, but it would make for a brilliant TV series, with truly endless possibilities. It’s a shame Jason Momoa is already playing Aquaman, as he would be the perfect choice to play the title character in this mixture of Doctor Who and Breaking Bad.

We’re getting a Teen Titans TV show by TNT which will supposedly have Robin leading the team. This idea would be a natural spin-off and, other than Arrow, the closest thing we’re going to get to a Batman TV series. One man attempting to save a city whilst trying to make a name for himself and step out of Batman’s shadow.

If Teen Titans and this spin-off Nightwing are both set in the Arrow/Flash universe, then we can have some of the bad guys shared around. I would love to see Deathstroke make an appearance and possibly the Suicide Squad. Supporting cast for this TV idea would of course have to include Barbara Gordon and cameos from Batman. Imagine the crossover episodes!

In that great debate of Marvel vs. DC that seems to consume a fair part of the internet, it is largely DC that comes in for criticism. Mostly, I suspect, this is because even today, Cinema is held in a higher regard than television. Which sucks for DC, because when it comes to their cinematic universe, DC are yet to prove themselves – especially since they have walled off the Nolan Batman trilogy from the rest of their universe. When it comes to both live action and animated TV however, DC has largely been giving Marvel a spanking for a while now.

This makes putting an article like this together a little tricky. A lot of the DC TV shows I’d like to see are either being shown or are being made, I mean they’re even working up a Hourman script for Heaven’s sake! As for what’s left, much of it is constrained by budget or repetition; a Green Lantern series on a TV show budget might even be worse than the movie. It strikes me though that one of DC’s best properties has, mostly, lain untouched.

Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is one of the jewels in DC’s crown, not just a good comic, but one so good that it’s considered up there with the graphic novel greats, like Watchmen, Maus and The Dark Night Returns. It is a masterpiece and like both Watchmen and The Dark Night Returns, I believe, too difficult to make a movie from (DC’s current plan). No, the characters have too much depth, too much story and full arcs that need the time a TV show could provide.

So that’s what I’d go for, a few short series’ in a self-contained world that doesn’t interact with the rest of the DC universe. A handful of short seasons, heavily based on the original Gaiman plot and allowed the space to breathe and fulfil its potential without having to worry about crossovers or the effect it might have on Batman in the DC cinematic universe.

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'Why would I not watch this?' The words Todd James said shortly before watching Pudsey the Dog: The Movie. Todd is a lover of all films, except bad ones, and spends more time in a dark room watching them than somebody so pale should.